


A Study in Laurel

by joudama



Series: An Apple A Day Keeps the Limping Doctor Away [1]
Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cthulhu Mythos, Gen, elder gods, eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1390408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joudama/pseuds/joudama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How one John Watson came back from the war and found both a flatmate <i>and a calling.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Click-Click-Clack

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald," or at least know the premise, this might not make much sense.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John dreams of gunshots, screams, and the sounds of the impossible legs going click-click-clack.

The sounds of gunshots and screams echo in his nightmares.

Gunshots, screams, and the sounds of the _click-click-clack_ of segmented legs scuttling across rock, and the burning--

He tears himself from his nightmares every night, when his leg feels like it is being burnt into ash from the icy venomous breath from the Royal's mouth, either screaming himself hoarse or sobbing until there is nothing left.

Tonight he can feel the tears prickling at his eyes, and John Watson curls up tightly on his side, leg flaring with pain and his left hand trembling, and cries until his shoulders shake.

He is grateful for the sobs, right before sleep finally takes him again. Sobs mean he will be able to sleep; fall into a deep, exhausted blackness where even the dreams won't touch him.

Screams mean he will not. Screams mean he is closer to finally giving in to the madness that has frayed the edges of his mind since the day Bastion fell and he foolishly fled into the caves; to hearing nothing but the _click-click-clack_ and the _clack-clack-click_ and the seeing blood red and jet black ocelli gleaming over the fanged tentacles and impossible biology forever, feeling nothing again the ice cold flame of the Royal's breath upon his leg.

He sobs; great, heaving sobs that leave him almost unable to breath, and because of that, his Browning stays tucked away in a box. But he knows, he _knows_ , that it was only a reprieve, and the next time it is screaming, when it is the _click-click-clack_ echoing in his ears and not blood on his hands and the bitter taste of futility like bile in his mouth, then the gun will not stay in its box.


	2. A Chance Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John meets an old friend by chance...and learns how to see the battle again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd and alas, not Brit-picked, so if you see any errors, please let me know!
> 
> And lol, alas, his chapter isn't very eldritch horror-y, since it's all a bit of set up, but we're getting there...

Daylight woke him. The sky was half-hidden with misty grey clouds, but the hints of the sky the same shade as yellowed old bones and the amber and clotted red sun peeped through.

It was a nice day. As nice as London got, that time of year.

John sat up in his bed and looked around.  The room was unchanged, unchang _ing_ ; grey, undecorated walls that always seemed too close, a table with an RAMC mug - Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, Gloriana, _Royal_ , _pain_ \- on it, and beside that...

His eyes skittered away from both the mug and the box as his leg began to ache, and he focussed his eyes on his cane.

He had only just pulled himself up and steeled himself to move when, from the corner of his eye, there was--

He went tense at the shadow, at the scuttling spider and his own reaction and the way his blood had gone cold, and turned on the telly to distract himself after he crashed down back onto the bed and before his breathing went erratic. A _spider_ , it was only a--

He got as far as a newscaster on the telly saying "a member of the Royal family--" before his leg pulsed again with flaming cold, and he pressed the off button as forcefully as he could, then hauled himself to his feet even as his leg screamed in agony.

The bedsit was a cave; he had to get _out_.

\--

He reckoned that somewhere _without_ walls would be the best place for him to go, so he found himself wandering around St Bart’s. That time in his life had been simpler. Everything had made sense back then. Back when he could still believe in things like ‘Queen and Country’.

Now, though…now John had both seen and knew too much.  He saw all the people obliviously walking by, all the students so full of hope and trust that he wanted to jump up and shake all of them, to scream at them to open their eyes, but…

He sighed and gritted his teeth. Kept on walking.

His leg hurt.  His hand shook.

He knew he wouldn't be able to do this for long. He could feel how close he was to that edge, how close to the nightmares bleeding into his waking world...

It was sobbing for now, but the screaming nights were coming, he knew. Every painful step made memory and anger flare through him, and unless he found something, _anything_ , to turn those screams outwards, then it would be the same result as if he had actually been killed in those Afghan caves.

It was rebels who had saved him back then - Afghanis who had refused again to bow to the Royalty, who had been hunting Royals and had found him, the Royal about to kill him to feed its monstrous appetite, its burning cold breath on his leg and fanged tentacles about to strike.

_"I'm on your side!" John yells, shutting his eyes when he feels his mind fraying apart, just a bit, at the sight of the Royal. "I am an Albion soldier, a doctor!" he cries out, and there is only the icy click-click-clack and a moist squelching that he soon realises is laughter._

_"Thatt izsz whkhy yeou ahre sso mucccrh mowre wehll-fedt tthan tthe onesss whkhoo ckkrrrawl ahroundt ahbovef, ahndt whkhoo kneow behtterr tthan tto kckome tto mhy kckavessss," it says in a voice that should not be, through its monstrous mouth of fang and tentacle, when John finally opens his eyes, and its ocelli gleam black and red even in the sickly darkness of the cave._

_John begins to scream, and it begins to laugh again, and he is--_

"John? John Watson?"

\--

The voice was familiar somehow, and jolted John quickly out of his memories.

“It is you! It’s me! Mike!”

John stared at him blankly. 

The man looked a little sheepish and added, “Mike Stamford! We were at Bart’s together!” 

The name clicked instantly, though it was hard to reconcile the stout man before him now with the excitable slip he remembered Stamford being.

The look on Mike’s face changed from sheepish amusement to sheepish embarrassment. “Yeah, I know, I got fat. But how have you been? Last I heard, you were off abroad somewhere getting shot at. What happened?” Mike said, obliviously.

John just blinked.  The entire situation was almost cruelly surreal. “…I got shot,” he finally said, and Mike’s mouth snapped shut awkwardly.

“Sounds like we have a lot to catch up on. Wait here, let me get us some coffee,” Mike said, his eyes flickering down to the cane John was leaning on, and John fought the urge to grind is teeth.

“That would be lovely, thank you,” he said, choosing to lie through them instead.

“Sit, sit, I’ll be back in a moment. Black, right?”

“Yeah, and ta,” John said, sitting down and wishing that he could run away instead. 

He raised his eyes to the yellowed-bone sky, and let out a sigh after Mike headed off.  This had been a mistake.

\--

“John? _John_?” 

John startled again. He’d tuned out, lost again in his own thoughts, and hadn’t even noticed Mike approaching. Again.

Mike was giving him a strange, almost pitying look, and John hated it. But he knew what he looked like - a crippled man staring out into space blankly. He knew the look he had on his face because he'd seen it before, more than once, on too many soldiers' and civilians' faces, out there.

And back here, even in London; blank faces staring out because whatever had once been them had been burnt away.

Mike handed him his coffee, and John reached for it unthinkingly with his left hand. It shook, making it harder for him to get that initial grip on the cup, and he steeled his face into an almost aggressive blankness to keep his own spike of hate at his own body and at the pitying look on Mike’s face from showing.  “Cheers. How much?”

“Oh, it was on me,” Mike said breezily, and John gave him a polite smile and took a drink.

Mike talked, and John simply sat and listened, the heat from the cup on coffee in his hands slowly warming them. It was just heavy enough to keep the tremor at bay, so he held it rather than drink.

Mike fell quiet, as if waiting for John to say something. But John had nothing to say, and the silence stretched out and became awkward. John knew how much he had changed; felt it all the more being around someone he had known from _before_. He honestly didn’t even know where to begin.

Well. He knew what not to say. He knew what he had to say, but…knew there was only so much to that story that was _safe_ to tell.

“I was stationed out at Camp Bastion. The base was attacked and overrun. I got shot then,” he said flatly. “I’m lucky to be alive,” he intoned, and the words felt like grit in his mouth. He sometimes wondered if he even was alive; if everything that had made him ‘John Watson’ hadn’t died in that cave in the desert. Or if maybe he wasn’t just insane and still in that cave, wrapped up tight and dreaming before the Royal came to feed.

He kept that to himself.

“After I was rescued, I spent a few weeks in the hospital, then got invalided home,” he said, and tightened his hand around his cup.

The silence drew out awkwardly before Mike gamely tried to break it again. “You were rescued? After you were shot? By who?”

“The insurgents,” he said sharply, feeling his face go tense.

“What, really? They didn’t, I mean, they didn’t kill you on that base whatever?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. “No. I escaped and ended up in some caves. Rebel insurgents against the Royalty there sa--found me."

“Sounds like a story there, mate,” Mike said, still holding on desperately for cheerful, and John let out a sigh. He’d give Mike credit; the man was trying--trying to pull John out of the black mood he seemed determined to slip into. The least he could do was try.

Plus, he really didn’t want to talk about it. He was a crap liar, and the truth…the truth was dangerous, both for life and sanity. “You…still at Bart’s, then?” John said, deciding it was past time to change the subject.

“Yeah. Teaching, now,” Mike said, with obvious relief. "Bright, young things, like we used to be. God, I hate them,” he said, and chuckled, but there was something that shaded his eyes and his laugh, almost too quickly to be noticed, but there was something…

John gave a bitter laugh as well, since, although it seemed like Mike was laughing, John couldn’t deny he’d been thinking something similar not too long before.

“What about you, just staying in town while you get yourself sorted?"

“I can’t afford London on an army pension,” he said, gritting his teeth and rubbing his hand against his leg.

“Ahh, you couldn’t bear to be anywhere else.  That’s not the John Watson I know,” Mike said with a grin.

“Yeah, I’m not the John Watson you knew,” John snapped, feeling his face growing tight, and his hand began to tremble more. He’d drunk too much coffee; the weight of it wasn’t enough to steady his hand anymore, and he switched hands. He flexed his fingers, hoping that would steady them, then balled his hand into a fist.

“Couldn’t Harry help?"

John let out a snort. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen."

“I dunno, you could—“ Mike suddenly stopped and gave John a sharp, narrow-eyed look, then covered it quickly. "You could get a flatshare or something?"  
   
John scoffed. “Come on. Who’d want me for a flatmate?" he said, but what he really thought was, _Who could I flatshare with but not endanger them or risk my own neck?_  
   
Mike had a small smile on his face, one John wasn't sure what to make of, then he chuckled.

“What?”

"You're the second person to say that to me today," he said, with an odd look on his face, and John had the feeling there was more going on than the conversation at hand.

Well. He had never been one to shy away when things seemed off. “Who’s the first?” he asked, and Mike grinned.  

“If we hurry, we should still be able to catch him,” Mike said, standing up.  
   
John, gamely, figured why the hell not, and shrugged. “All right,” he said, and pulled himself to his feet.

—

“This way,” Mike said, leading John through the hospital. It was familiar and yet not, in ways that made John feel even more out of step than he had before. Still, it was bright and clean and felt open, and that was enough for John.

Mike led him to one of the labs, and John stopped himself, just barely, from shuddering slightly at the darker walls and lowered lights.

 _Say something, say anything_ , John thought, almost desperately, before his mind starting imagining things in the shadows. “So. Bit different from my day,” he said, hoping the desperation didn’t come through.

Something about it must have done, because the only other person in the room, a man in a well-fitting, likely bespoke, suit looked up from the pipette he was using, and flicked his eyes over John. 

Mike chuckled, oblivious still. “You’ve no idea."

The other man glanced over at Mike, then seemed to dismiss them and focused his attention back on his pipette. “Mike, can I borrow your phone? There’s no signal on mine,” the man asked unexpectedly.

“What’s wrong with the land line?” Mike asked, and Sherlock gave him a sharp look John couldn’t even begin to interpret, then said, “I prefer to text.”

“Sorry, it’s in my coat.”

“Here, use mine,” John said, pulling his phone out. It wasn’t like he ever used it, and it wasn’t like it would hurt him to be nice.

The other man looked surprised. “Oh, thank you,” he said, and stood up, then strode over to where John was standing.

“This is an old friend of mine, John Watson,” Mike said, and John waited to hear who the other man was.

The other man said nothing, just took his mobile, popped it open, and began using it with far more ease than John ever had.

John was beginning to feel distinctly ignored when the man spoke again. "Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked, with a quick glance at John’s face.

An amused smile touched Mike’s face.

John blinked. “Sorry?"

“Which was it? Afghanistan or Iraq?” the man asked again, handing John back his phone.

“Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you-?” he said, feeling completely off kilter.  
    
The man ignored his question and went back to working. “How do you feel about the violin?”

Mike’s amused smile changed to a full grin, and the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders seemed to vanish, making John wonder even more just what he had wandered in to. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end aside from practicing lines. Will that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."  
   
John felt like he had just been thrown more wrong footed, and he frowned, trying to figure out how the man knew he was looking for a flatmate. Mike had said he’d introduce him to someone, but they had met by chance and he’d been with Mike since they’d run into each other. How had...? “You--you told him about me?” he finally asked Mike, perplexed.

“Not a word."  
   
“Then who said anything about flatmates?” John said, turning his attention now on the strange man now peering into a microscope.

The man straightened up, then reached for his coat.  “I did,” the strange man said as he put his coat on and wrapped his muffler around his neck. "I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for, now here he is, right after lunch time with an old friend clearly back home from military service in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a difficult leap.”

“How did you know about Afghanistan?”

“I’ve been offered a nice little place by the theatre I’m working at,” he said as he walked past John, towards the door. "Together we ought to be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o’clock.” He gave John an impersonal half smile, then walked past him, towards the door. "Sorry, got to dash. I only came to check the results, and the fewer people who see me here, the better."

“What? Why? And is that it?”

“Is that what?” he strange man said, his voice going sharp as he walked back away from the door and once more into the lab.

“We’ve only just met, and we’re going to go look at a flat,” John said, wondering now if the man was even madder than he was.

“Problem?” the man said, putting his hands in his pockets and looking slightly put-out as well as expectant.

John looked over at Mike in disbelief, but Mike just sat there with an amused look on his face, as if waiting to see how John reacted to this.  John was starting to think Mike was going to get a punch in the nose for all this.

“We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name,” John said, completely incensed.

The man’s entire demeanour changed, and his grey eyes focussed on him with a weight that was almost physical. John felt almost cornered by them, by a sharp gaze as piercing as black and red ocelli, but with none of the malice. “I know you’re an army doctor, I know you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan, I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife, and I know that your limp is psychosomatic, most likely caused by a most unfortunate encounter with a Royal,” he fired, each word as sharp and precise as a sniper’s bullet, and John felt his grip on his cane tightening.

"And more importantly,” the man said, his voice dropping and his eyes going even sharper, focussing now solely on John’s face, “I know you're a Restorationist. Or are slowly beginning to harbour those tendencies, which is more or less the same thing. And I do believe that is more than enough to be getting on with, don’t you think?" he queried, and headed back to the door without waiting for an answer.

The man stopped halfway out the door, turned slightly, and smiled disarmingly, as if he hadn’t just said something that could easily get John _killed_ , or _worse_ , if the wrong people heard it. “The name is Sherry Vernet, and we’ll meet at the front of the Covent Garden station. Safer that way,” he said, then gave John a wink and rushed out the door with an “Afternoon,” to Mike.  
   
“Yeah, he’s always like that,” Mike said, as if Mike hadn’t just heard the mortar shell Sherry Vernet had just dropped. …Almost. Mike’s previous jovial grin was gone, and he seemed far more serious.  Serious, but not scandalised, and John could hear the blood rushing in his ears as his leg flared in white-hot frozen pain.

"You--" John began, eyes wide on Mike and something squeezing painfully at his chest. He could feel how much his lips had curled back, how his own teeth were bared, when he snarled the word out. His hand wrapped tight around his phone, ready to hurl it in Mike's face to distract him if he had to. Even an _accusation_ like that, if heard in the wrong place, if whispered to the wrong person, could be death, and Mike had--  
   
Everything was bright and sharp in the sudden betrayal, like it had been the day Camp Bastion had been taken.  
   
"No," Mike said, shaking his head and raising his hands, as if to diffuse John. "I didn't tell him _anything_. He does that," Mike said, and leaned forward slightly, voice low. "And he's usually right. He...was right about me. Was he...was he right about you…about you,  _too_?"  
   
There was a tension in Mike's voice, and John could see both the truth in his words and the risk Mike had just taken, as well as what Mike was _offering_ , if John wanted it. But more importantly, he could see something else. Something he'd not seen these long, dull grey months. Everything was sharp, bright, and adrenaline sang in his veins, and the roaring cold fire in his leg, for that a brief instant, banked into almost nothing. 

For the first time, he could see his way back into the battle. Because the man, Vernet, had been _right_. John himself hadn't even realised it, but...but he was _right_.  
   
"Yeah," was all John said, and for the first time that day, his hand was steady as a rock; as steady as his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way! I have a tumblr now. I should probably admit I'm not very GOOD at tumblr, but hey, it exists, with this same user name, joudama. ^^;;


End file.
